Nu!Trek and Romulan War

In the Prime verse the Romulan War happened roughly 100 years earlier. On TOS there were still those who were bitter about Romulans. Those of you TOS fans, I am sure will remember Stiles in Balance of Terror. He was clearly bitter, and I would dare say prejudice (Remember how he treated Spock when they showed the Romulans looked like them?)

Yet, the fact a Romulan blew up an entire Federation world, is just let go. I get that they are rebooting things. However, anything before 2230 is thought to be the same in both timelines, since that is where the two timelines split. So older fans are to assume because of this. The Federation is supposed to say, "Oh, it's alright that you blew up one of our founding member's homeworld, and killed 6 billion Vulcan and countless non-Vulcans."

To me it is kinda like Japan bombing Hawaii, and the US just saying, "it's alright, we are not going to do a damn thing about it." We didn't do that, instead we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I am not condoning it, just using it to make my point.

Rumor has it we might meet more Klingons in STXII, seems to me we need to deal with the Romulans. And yes, I get this is not the act of the Romulan government. But wouldn't that have been a better battle for Admiral Marcus to try to fight? He would have gotten a hell of a lot more backing for it.

Nero and crew carried out a rogue operation, not a planned, large-scale military attack.

The Romulan Empire played no direct role in the destruction of Vulcan and (whether they learned of it from Starfleet/Federation contact or via intelligence sources of their own) would have had no knowledge thereof until some unspecified time after the fact.

I'm sure nuStiles would have a coronary once he found out about this, but assuming the Romulan government puts a full spin on it (plus I'm guessing there are recordings of Nero's line about how his crew "stand(s) apart"), I doubt there would be a huge kerfuffle about it.

Let's not forget that STXI took place some years before Kirk Prime made contact with Romulans in the other timeline... Yet the nuFederation already knew what Romulans look like, had knowledge of Romulan dialects, and appeared to be in a dialogue with the Romulan government and capable of complaining to them about Nero.

The situation vis-á-vis UFP and RSE is probably rather different in the two universes, then. Might very well be something that happened after 2233, as per the premise of the reboot.

I think the 9/11 attacks would be a more relevant real-world comparison than Pearl Harbor. The vast majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis (15 out of 19), but it's not like we went and invaded Saudi Arabia. The US maintains deep diplomatic ties to Saudi Arabia, yet there is still widespread distrust/hatred/etc. among members of both nations.

I suspect the Federation undertook an effort to confirm whether or not Nero and his cohorts were Romulans, and ended up forcing the Romulan borders open, at least diplomatically, sometime after the Kelvin's destruction... hence all the information not known in the original timeline.

Let's not forget that STXI took place some years before Kirk Prime made contact with Romulans in the other timeline... Yet the nuFederation already knew what Romulans look like, had knowledge of Romulan dialects, and appeared to be in a dialogue with the Romulan government and capable of complaining to them about Nero.

The situation vis-á-vis UFP and RSE is probably rather different in the two universes, then. Might very well be something that happened after 2233, as per the premise of the reboot.

Timo Saloniemi

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In the New timeline the first visual contact with the Romulans would have been Ayel's mug on the Kelvin's viewscreen. Audio first contact, (for humans) would have taken place during the NX-01's mission in both timelines. Since the treaty that ended the Romulan War was negotiated over subspace radio, I imagine humans (and their allies) have a good knowledge of Romulan dialects in both universes.

I imagine the UFP didn't find out the attackers were Romulan until the Kelvin's logs were reviewed and the survivors questioned. They probably had a few questions for the Vulcans after that.

I'm not sure any degree of questioning would have revealed the identity of those attackers - something else, comparable to "Balance of Terror", must have happened in addition.

Supposedly, Romulan is almost identical to Vulcan, hence the need for Uhura's expertise. It's a bit dubious that any amount of audio contact with Romulans would amount to the identifying of exactly three ways in which the speaker can reveal him- or herself as Romulan... I mean, one could tell an East German speaker from a West German by dialect thanks to existing knowledge of pre-split German dialects, and one might spot an East German agent when he says "Elast" instead of "Plast". But if one seals a peace treaty with somebody whose language differs only ever-so-slightly from German, one would have to be remarkably stupid not to consider the possibility that the enemy is German!

"Balance of Terror" and STXI together must be taken to mean that the old peace treaty was negotiated in English, or that the Earth negotiators had a good reason to think that the opponents speaking odd Vulcan did not have it as their native language.

I'm not sure any degree of questioning would have revealed the identity of those attackers - something else, comparable to "Balance of Terror", must have happened in addition.

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I'm sure the audio/visual/whatever records from the Kelvin would be enough. The shuttles must have contained copies, so questioning the survivors would be a secondary source of data. The path of RSE/UFP relations after that is up for grabs until Nero returned and destroyed Vulcan.

What I mean is, nothing about the stories of the survivors would indicate that these pointy-eared, green-blooded people were Romulans.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the survivors would have been eavesdropping on the conversation aboard the Narada (although we only have proof that they were monitoring Robau's lifesigns). But nothing discussed there indicated the origin of the attackers! At the very best, our valiant sidekicks might decide that these people were renegade Vulcans of some sort, but they probably wouldn't make the connection to the old war with the faceless enemy.

What I mean is, nothing about the stories of the survivors would indicate that these pointy-eared, green-blooded people were Romulans.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the survivors would have been eavesdropping on the conversation aboard the Narada (although we only have proof that they were monitoring Robau's lifesigns). But nothing discussed there indicated the origin of the attackers! At the very best, our valiant sidekicks might decide that these people were renegade Vulcans of some sort, but they probably wouldn't make the connection to the old war with the faceless enemy.

Timo Saloniemi

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I think the language contained in the logs would be enough. Not everyone in Starfleet's linguistics division is as ignorant of Romulan as Uhura's predecessor. While the "sidekicks" might not make the connection, higher ups at Starfleet Command, Starfleet Intelligence and the Vulcan government would. Indeed they must have, since Kirk, who only knows about it from either history and/or first person accounts, refers to the ship that attacked the Kelvin as a Romulan one.

I think the language contained in the logs would be enough. Not everyone in Starfleet's linguistics division is as ignorant of Romulan as Uhura's predecessor.

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But what possible reason would the first Nero encounter give to anybody for thinking that the language they hear is Romulan? According to the "three dialects" scene, the language Nero would have spoken would have been Vulcan! (Unless, of course, he spoke English to his Starfleet captive, or used a superior future translator that would leave Robau hearing English but unable to deduce the originating language.) There's no good reason why Starfleet would think that Vulcan-looking (if bald and tattooed) people speaking Vulcan would be Romulans, not unless something like "Balance of Terror" subsequently happened.

And obviously something did, because our heroes in 2258 know a thing or two about Romulans, none of which they could have learned from the stories of late Robau's surviving crew. But with some other incident revealing that Romulans are renegade Vulcans, everybody would naturally realize that the renegade Vulcans who destroyed the Kelvin were most probably Romulans.

To me it is kinda like Japan bombing Hawaii, and the US just saying, "it's alright, we are not going to do a damn thing about it."

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Actually, it's more like Saudi Arabia bombing the World Trade center and the U.S. declaring war on Afghanistan.

Think about it: Nero -- a renegade Romulan -- destroys Vulcan and is narrowly prevented from destroying Earth. Barely a year later we see warhawk Admiral Marcus, who is trying to start a war with... The Klingons?

Rumor has it we might meet more Klingons in STXII, seems to me we need to deal with the Romulans.

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We already dealt with the Romulans. Nero is dead, Kirk blew his ship to smithereens and flushed it down a black hole. Case closed. And the Romulan Empire at this time in history is technologically inferior to the Federation in almost every way; the Klingons remain, at this point, a far greater threat.

Interestingly, Klingons is what Starfleet was worried about just before Nero made his temporal and temporary incursion... The walla on the Kelvin bridge includes discussion about whether the space thunderstorm would be the doing of the Klingons, and the response is a negative: the ship is "75,000 kilometers from the-".

We don't know from what, exactly, but essentially our teaser heroes are practically brushing off against something relating to the Klingon threat! Was the ship on a mission to spy on the formidable enemy (while apparently on her way to Earth where Winona Kirk would have given birth to a son in an orderly fashion not long thereafter)? Was she being shadowed by Klingons in a classic cold war moment? Was she doing the shadowing? Had she just finished off a Klingon in battle, then been distracted by the storm? No matter what the rationale, being but a fraction of a lightsecond away from Klingons was supposed to be reassuring at that point of time!

It's sort of a logical continuum there, then, as regards who is the real threat.

Interestingly, Klingons is what Starfleet was worried about just before Nero made his temporal and temporary incursion... The walla on the Kelvin bridge includes discussion about whether the space thunderstorm would be the doing of the Klingons, and the response is a negative: the ship is "75,000 kilometers from the-".

We don't know from what, exactly, but essentially our teaser heroes are practically brushing off against something relating to the Klingon threat!

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In the script it's the Klingon Neutral Zone and the distance is 150,000 instead.

In the script it's the Klingon Neutral Zone and the distance is 150,000 instead.

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That wouldn't have been much of an improvement, in the sense that Klingons could certainly have been responsible for the space storm if the action indeed took place right next to their territory.

We don't know that Kirk was born on Earth in the prime timeline. He could have been born in space.

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True enough - being "from" Iowa might mean just having a residence there. But Kirk lives in San Francisco at the time of the movies, and supposedly lived on Tarsus IV for part of his youth. So where does the special significance of Iowa come from? Is it some lengthy chapter in his middle years - or the site of his very first years after all?

I doubt it... they were in Fed space, after all.

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That's where Kirk Prime had all his battles with Klingons, though.

Although what in the movie suggests that the Kelvin would have been in Federation space? As opposed to neutral space, or Klingon territory, or perhaps Romulan space (which was the starting point of Nero's time travel, and typically Trek time travel doesn't take you to a different location)...

True enough - being "from" Iowa might mean just having a residence there.

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Or it might mean he grew up there even though he was born in space, just as it was in the Abramsverse timeline.

Timo said:

or perhaps Romulan space (which was the starting point of Nero's time travel, and typically Trek time travel doesn't take you to a different location)...

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If they were in Romulan space why would there be a mention of Klingons, as opposed to Romulans?

Red matter black hole time travel appears to operate by different rules than some time travel we've seen before. Not only does the time travel create a branching timeline, but you emerge in a different location from where you started. Nero's group had to mathematically calculate where Spock would emerge, it wasn't as simple as just going back to where they came out. And since Spock and Nero had different emergence points, from that alone we know that at least one of them had an emergence point which was different from his departure point. So we know that, generally speaking, it cannot be assumed that in red matter black hole time travel the emergence point will necessarily be the same as the departure point.